Description
Dulens APO Mini Prime
The Dulens APO mini primes are aimed at cinematographers who are both looking for the hard sought after vintage low contrast look with pronounced flares but who dismiss the uncorrected look of vintage primes resulting in chromatic aberrations. The Dulens APO mini primes feature a cinema housing, with non extending or rotating front and a long smooth focus throw with zero backlash making them ideal for usage on higher end productions. The Dulens mini primes are the smallest large format cine primes and are ideal for small scale productions and for those who work with drones, gimbals and other applications where a small scale and lightweight camera build is paramount.
All of the Dulens mini primes have a very generous image circle covering about any Large format camera including Red Monstro and Arri LF. The 58 and 85mm will even cover the ARRI Alexa 65.
APO
‘ APO’ refers to apochromatic which is a lens design that has better correction of chromatic and spherical aberration than the much more common achromat lenses. Unlike with many modern lenses the APO standard on Dulens APO mini primes lenses is not established by the use of aspherical elements but by a sophisticated lens design to minimize chromatic aberrations. Asphericals have many downfalls including the much hated ‘ onion bokeh’ , which is caused by cnc molding to manufacture the aspherical. Dulens has a nicely pronounced and clean bokeh and due to the high iris blade count the bokeh remains even circular when stopping down the lens to values such as t5.6 or t8.0. Due to the non aspherical lens design there is zero unwanted bokeh texture like onion rings.
Focal Lengths
The current line up of the Dulens APO mini prime series is 31,43,58 and 85mm. Dulens is working on more focal length and we soon expect the arrival of a 21mm lens.
Dulens is researching even wider and much longer focal lengths with the same design philosophy. All of the optics in Dulens APO mini primes are original designs and not just re-releases of vintage optics, instead they are inspired by classic designs but recalculated with modern methods with both the intent to diminish chromatic aberrations and have high MTF (contrast and resolution). Another important feature of this lens series is that the lenses can easily be intercutted and have the same contrast and color and flare properties.
85mm has 7 elements in 6 groups
58mm 9 elements in 8 groups (double-Gauss)
43mm has 10 elements in 8 groups
The 31mm features a advanced retrofocus type of optical scheme
VC Coating
The applied coating to Dulens lens structure is a newly developed coating which we may call “V or VL” coating, as we know there are a lots of cinematographers who prefer non-coated lenses because of it’s very special flare and fog/bloom properties, but it is also challenging for lighting and also results in less light in transmission (T stop vs F stop) and also decreases color accuracy. V coating aims to have a pleasing signature style flare and low contrast but without the loss of light transmission like white glass or non coated lenses. The lens flares produced by this camera are playful and unlike most modern high transmission coatings which create a huge fixed colour flare the Dulens will feature ring shaped and rainbow colors when flaring the lens.
Interchangeable Lens Mount
Here at Gafpa we will make sure all lenses are collimated, however some lenses might be off, which can be caused by a wrongly collimated camera mount, or an olpf that changes the backfocus of a wider lens virtually.
We will provide a tutorial, all you need is a lens spanner to open the lens on the front. With a simple system which can be controlled with a screw driver one can determine infinity focus by focusing the lens on the infinity mark and adjusting the lens accordingly.
The Lenses are shipped with a PL mount however you can also find EF mounts in our shop, and they are user replaceable under 2 minutes.
Lens Markings and Focus Gears
The Dulens APO Mini Prime features all metal 0.8 pitch focus gears both for the iris and focus. Because these lenses have such a small footprint a lot of people were concerned if it would still be possible to drive the iris with a motor. We tested these lenses in many different situations and as long as you use two rods (one left one right), they can be driven by follow focus motors,
We even checked the LPL to Pl mounts on the alexa if the wing nuts would obstruct a motor, but even here no problems!
When ordering the DUlens APO mini prime you don’t need to specify if you want lens markings to be expressed in feet or metric because right now both metric and imperial markings are both displayed on the lens.
